In Enemy Hands Read online

  “There has to be a way,” Srin muttered from across the table, startling her.

  She admired his persistence, even as she disagreed with his assessment.

  “We’re still prisoners,” she said softly. “It’s just that the bars of this prison aren’t so obvious.”

  His gaze swept over the dinner setting—the gleaming plates and cutlery above the smooth ivory tablecloth—then over her. Moon shivered at the fury in his eyes.

  “They took my life away from me, Moon.”

  It was the first time he had ever used her personal name. It sounded full and soft on his lips. Once again, despite their circumstances, she felt a flutter in her belly and despised herself for thinking with her groin at a time like this.

  “I understand.”

  They had taken her life away from her too. But at least she didn’t have to suffer the indignity of having her memory wiped with frightening regularity. Just for one wild moment, Moon wondered whether the Republic had done the same thing to her—pumped her full of drugs like they had done to Srin. She grasped the edge of the table with stiff fingers, using the solid feel of the surface against her flesh to help hold down feelings of panic. No, remembering everything she’d done for the past few weeks, she was almost certain Srin was the only amnesiac experiment here, but that brief moment showed her exactly how precarious her own standing was.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

  “Do you know what it is they inject me with? Has Hen ever mentioned it to you?”

  “He mentioned it once,” Moon told him. “Benzodiazepine. But that describes a class of drugs rather than the specific one he’s been using on you.” She shook her head helplessly. “And I still don’t know how it’s delivered, which could also be important.” Her voice was soft. “I’m sorry.”

  He was gracious even in his frustration, merely nodding. “It’s a start.”

  Except it wasn’t. He was being kind and all it did was heighten her feelings of impotence.

  “I don’t remember anything about yesterday,” he continued. “I get a headache if I try to think about it too much. Am I at the beginning of the cycle?”

  “This is the first day.” She nodded.

  “Do you know how many times….” He lapsed into silence, unable to finish the sentence.

  She knew what he wanted to ask. She didn’t want to give him an answer, but he had asked her directly. She was the first person he had ever thought to confide in and she thought he deserved her honesty if she couldn’t provide anything else. “Eighteen years.”

  “Eighteen.” She saw the muscles in his arms tense, as if he might explode out of his chair and begin rampaging through the lab. Under the circumstances, Moon thought she might have done the same thing. But it was a measure of the man Srin had once been, a person of immense self-discipline, that he didn’t do it. But the spark of anger in his eyes refused to die.

  “Did Hen mention anything about,” he hesitated, “anyone else? Family? Friends?”

  “No.”

  And Moon felt as helpless as he as she saw the stab of pain rip through him.

  So Yalona was lost to him, whether dead or displaced far from him, he couldn’t say. Srin tried to capture the feelings he felt for her, the passion that led to his bonding proposal, but it was like reaching through dense fog. He knew that some small part of him had reconciled himself to that loss a while ago. That hurt more than anything else—the thought that the Republic hadn’t even given him the time and decency to properly mourn her passing from his life.

  Had she tried to find out where he was, what had happened to him after his fateful trip to the Science Directorate? He searched his cloudy memory, but there was nothing. Maybe they told her he had been in an accident and got killed. Even if she harboured hope of his return, such hope would have been erased more than a decade ago. He knew time had passed, could see it in the worn face that met him in the mirror each day even if he couldn’t precisely reckon the passing, but he hadn’t expected such a length of time.

  Eighteen years. Almost two decades.

  He would have had at least one child by now, maybe even two. A well-built son, or a daughter, with hope shining in her eyes.

  Maybe it was the drugs, but he couldn’t fix the image of a daughter quite right. Yalona’s hair was blond, her skin pale, yet the child he imagined was darker, glowing brown rather than ivory. She had brown hair like his, and matching eyes.

  He focused on the woman who sat opposite and almost smiled. Even with a crippled mind, his subconscious was still in high gear. His imaginary daughter didn’t look like Yalona at all, but she bore more than a passing resemblance to his astrophysicist dinner companion. Was he compensating for a previous loss, or opening himself up to a new possibility?

  He knew he was crazy to even think like that, but there was something about Moon Thadin that provoked his protective instincts. Considering that he had been systematically medicated for the past two decades into being nothing more than a calculating automaton, he recognised that kick in his gut for the significant response that it was.

  She was pretty, her features enhanced by her obvious intelligence. She was compassionate. And, amid the madness—his first ever plea for help, while trapped on a combat-ready spaceship filled to the brim with highly trained soldiers on a hair trigger—Srin was moved. Moved not by a desire to flee or destroy but by a compulsion to take her in his arms and kiss her.

  Did he even remember how to? he wondered with a flash of dark humour. Or maybe Moon was just one in a line of mindless dalliances for him over the years. But he didn’t think so. And the hidden panel of scratchings in his cabin, a coded briefing to his newly-reset brain, didn’t indicate that either. He could never be completely sure, of course, but he was more than halfway certain that he hadn’t confided his misgivings, his feeling that something was going on, to anybody else. There was something about Moon that he trusted, and that each of his newly minted two-day selves trusted too. And he had to start somewhere.

  He surprised himself by getting to his feet and extending a hand to her. His surprise doubled when, after the slightest of hesitations, she took it. Maybe he looked more competent than he felt.

  When he held her, it was like holding a woman for the first time, her warmth and softness filling his hands, teasing his nerve endings with promise. She was almost as tall as he, and he liked that. Liked the fact that he didn’t have to bend down too far, or stretch up, to capture her lips. Liked the sense of comfort her body gave him. Was that selfish of him?

  He held her as if they were dancing to slow romantic music, his arms enclosing her body, pulling her close up against him. He wanted to relax his hands and let his fingers skim the curve of her spine and the fullness of her backside. With his eyes closed, he could almost imagine himself lying down, holding her exactly like that. Her groin, deliciously feminine, curved against his erection, firing a series of erotic images in his brain. It was too easy picturing her mounted above him, moving against him and against his length of engorged flesh buried in her hot wetness. The muscles of her body were firm and smooth to his touch and it took an immense amount of effort to stop his hands from repeating the actions of his mind, squeezing against her buttocks and forcing her pelvis closer to his.

  Moon was difficult to resist, a difficulty made worse when she finally touched him. He felt two arms slide up around his neck and his own embrace tightened as he breathed deeply of her. She wore no perfume beyond the fragrance of soap and shampoo, but Srin could have sworn she also smelt of intellect. It was a heady scent associated with the large clearboards she worked so tirelessly at—a sharp, incisive, spirit-based undertone. It should have added up to a distracting conflict but, instead, seemed to embody everything that he thought about the scientist. Femininity overlaying intelligence, and softness over a deceptive strength. Moon Thadin was all of that and more.

  He thrust his tongue gently into her mouth and was surprised by the vehemence of her re
sponse. Instead of him taking the lead, she did. Srin felt the force of her desire, a wall of pent-up passion breaking over him. Had Yalona been like this, so eager to press flesh against flesh, to duel with his tongue and run trembling fingers through his hair? Damn it, he couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember the woman he once thought of marrying. Instead, his senses were filled with Moon, her hands pulling at him, her breasts pushing against him, the entire length of her body hot and inviting.

  He wanted to take her right there and then, in the cavernous room where they spent the majority of their time together. He knew he would enjoy the recollection when he walked into the lab the next morning. One day to savour the recollection of a night of ardour before pharmaceuticals reclaimed his memories once more.

  He wanted to breathe her in some more, inhale the scent of her skin, lick at the sensitive juncture of her neck and the apex of her thighs. He wanted to feel her clench and contract around his fingers, around his cock, milking him to orgasm.

  He wanted, but he couldn’t. Who was he doing this for? For Moon? Or for himself? He wanted the sexual release he knew he’d find in her body. He felt like he had been trapped in cotton wool for an eternity, and he wanted to feel alive, to hear the quick thump of his heartbeat in his ears, to feel his throat roughen with cries of release. But he knew they were just selfish cravings. He had nothing beyond the lustful cravings of a man. With his enfeebled mind, he didn’t have the ability to protect or even initiate a meaningful relationship with Moon. And how he wanted to. He might not be in love with her but he was deeply attracted to her. The thought struck him that perhaps a previous him had fallen in love with her. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. And that thought hardened his resolve.

  Reluctantly, he lifted his hands from her body and disengaged the arms that were around his neck. Pulling away, he saw the flush on her face, her swollen lips and her dazed brown eyes, for once free of their characteristic wariness.

  “I want to,” he began.

  “Then do it.” Her voice was soft but firm. “My quarters are just down the corridor.”

  “And then what? I can’t help you escape and you can’t help me. What happens the day after tomorrow when I lose my memory and have to be introduced to you again, just like the very first time?”

  He saw hurt flash across her face, was pained by it, but adamant that he was only saying what needed to be said.

  “You deserve someone better. Someone you can build a relationship with. Not an overgrown lab animal running the same tired treadmill.”

  “And what if I don’t?” she countered. “What if I don’t want someone ‘better’?”

  He shook his head and took a step back. “I can’t be what you need, Moon. I wish I could.”

  “How do you know what I need?” And he heard the bitterness in her voice. “Maybe all I need is someone to make me forget where I am and what I am. Maybe all you think you can provide is all I need.”

  “You know that isn’t true.”

  “Do I?”

  “Even I remember the Security Force,” he told her. “Not facts, but feelings. And I know that after three years in their clutches, you need someone better than a mental cripple to depend on.”

  “Someone who can take care of me, you mean?”

  He nodded, a swift jerk of his head. “Yes.”

  She bit the edge of her bottom lip, thinking for a handful of seconds. “Someone capable and intelligent, perhaps?” she asked, but didn’t wait for his answer. He felt her gaze, like hot lasers, on his face, watching for a reaction. “Someone with authority. Someone equipped to protect and take care of me. Someone like Drue Jeen?”

  He couldn’t believe the skewer of white-hot anger that slashed through his body at the mention of the Differential’s captain, made worse by the fact that he was everything Srin was not. Not any longer, in any case. Jeen was taller, younger, more powerful, more handsome. Jeen had his mind intact. Srin tried to control himself at the thought of Jeen putting his hands on Moon’s smooth brown skin, but something must have showed beyond his gritted teeth and clenched fists because a look of satisfaction flickered on her face.

  Damn her, but didn’t she realise how fucking noble he was trying to be? Didn’t she know how much self-control it was taking just to keep his hands off her?

  It seemed a long time since Srin last got angry, but he felt the steady boil building in his veins. There was so little still within his control that he was determined not to lose what crumbs he still retained. Even his characteristic nagging headache faded into the background.

  “You’re not going to provoke me, Moon.”

  “Then don’t pretend you’re better than me. You’re not.” Her voice was vehement but melodic, and he listened in pleasure even as her words lashed against him. “We’re just two people caught in a relatively luxurious prison through circumstances beyond our control. Surely what we choose to do with whatever time we have together is our own concern?”

  “I wish that were true. But you know it isn’t.”

  Was it perverse to glean pleasure from their argument? Srin was proud of Moon’s ability to argue with him, even if there was no resolution in sight. She was truly someone he could imagine spending time getting to know. The only problem was, time was something he had nothing of. And she deserved so much better than the tatters he could offer.

  “I’m not a child, Srin,” she said, obviously deciding to take another tack.

  But he was a step ahead of her. “I know you’re not a child. But you deserve better than a helpless drug addict.”

  She made a sound of disgust deep in her throat. Srin would have smiled if the discussion they were having wasn’t so serious. She was angry at the moment because she cared for him—though she did not come out directly and say it. He felt a warm glow deep inside, even as he tried to push her away. He wondered if there was any way in the universe he could somehow hold on to that feeling, dig his fingers into it and anchor it in his fickle memory, so he could pull it out in the future and marvel at how another being cared enough to fight with him. They had taken away his life. But surely there was some way he could hold on to just one permanent memory of happiness?

  Even as he thought it, he knew he was deluding himself. The fact that he could not retain a memory for longer than two days meant that anything between them was doomed before it even began.

  “Aren’t you reaching a bit low?” Her face was still flushed, but this time with rising irritation. “Calling yourself a drug addict?”

  “Whether I got to this point voluntarily or not it doesn’t change the facts.”

  The smile on her face was nothing more than a humourless twist of her lips. “I see. And you’re willing to throw away any chance for pleasure—even temporary—because you consider yourself an addict?”

  “It’s the truth, Moon.”

  “As you see it.”

  “That’s true. But that’s the only way I know.”

  Chapter Eight

  Moon had never before heard the sound that woke her from sleep, but she knew instantly it meant something bad. The shrill alternating cry, emphasised by a regular bass thump, cut through to her bones. She sat up in bed with a gasp, grabbing the sides of her bunk with clenched fingers. There was always some indirect illumination from built-in panels that picked up the hard lines and edges in the cabin, but now they all winked out and she was plunged into complete darkness.

  Then the hum of the air filters—a background sound she hadn’t noticed until it was gone—died. Moon drew in a panicked breath. Her heart was beating too fast to be used as any kind of reliable measure, but perhaps two seconds later, strips of low emergency lighting flashed on, glowing amber in lines along the floor and ceiling.

  She strained her ears, listening for the air filters, but heard nothing above the klaxon’s strident call.

  Then even that terrible sound disappeared into the void as she felt the ship skate beneath her body. It was such an alien sensation. She felt like she wa
s barreling through an icy cylinder, the walls of her cabin shifting and swaying as if they were melting in some alien fire. Just as Moon felt it couldn’t get any worse, the gravity field cut out.

  Her body drifted slowly away from her bed. Bile rose in her throat. She shut her eyes. That helped a bit, but the sensation was still unnerving. She felt the sides of the bunk slip away from her fingers and was soon floating free, but her eyes remained firmly shut.

  Moon had never been weightless before. Not like this. She remembered one occasion, traveling to a conference on a commercial flight, when the anti-gravity had momentarily failed, but she was strapped in at the time and—except for a passing second of nausea—she was fine. The field had kicked back in almost instantly and the rest of the flight passed without incident.

  But here? Moon felt a wall—or was it the ceiling?—gently hit her body, and she shuddered. Was that why almost every panel on the ship was coated in the rubbery compound that had so fascinated her when she first stepped on board? To minimise injury in case of an accident such as the one that plagued them now? She wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. There were too many things going wrong with her experiment. This, on top of Srin’s disclosures. She couldn’t even think straight, not with the bone-chilling sound of the siren rippling through every point in the ship. Moon clapped her hands over her ears, but the wail penetrated flesh. She sobbed, and hot tears squeezed from beneath her eyelids.

  How long this went on, she couldn’t say. She bounced against walls, and bumped into several objects, but she didn’t know whether that was because she was moving or the ship was. She didn’t dare open her eyes to find out, convinced that doing so would tip her over the edge and she would then have to somehow try avoiding floating pools of vomit. Even the thought of it made her feel worse. Moon tried squeezing her eyes even harder, pushing her hands against her ears even more firmly, in a futile effort to block the situation from her mind.